Milan
'Milan '''is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city in Italy after Rome, with the city proper having a population of 1,372,075 while its province-level municipality has a population of 3,242,420.6 Its continuously built-up urban area (that stretches beyond the boundaries of the Metropolitan City of Milan) has a population estimated to be about 5,270,000 over 1,891 square kilometres (730 square miles).7 The wider Milan metropolitan area, known as Greater Milan, is a polycentric metropolitan region that extends over central Lombardy and eastern Piedmont and which counts an estimated total population of 7.5 million, making it by far the largest metropolitan area in Italy89101112 and the 54th largest in the world. Milan served as capital of the Western Roman Empire from 386 to 402 and the Duchy of Milan during the medieval period and early modern age. Milan is considered a leading alpha global city,13 with strengths in the field of the art, commerce, design, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, services, research and tourism. Its business district hosts Italy's stock exchange and the headquarters of national and international banks and companies. In terms of GDP, it has the third-largest economy among European cities after Paris and London, but the fastest in growth among the three, and is the wealthiest among European non-capital cities.1415 Milan is considered part of the Blue Banana and one of the "Four Motors for Europe". The city has been recognized as the world's fashion and the design capital16 thanks to several international events and fairs, including Milan Fashion Week and the Milan Furniture Fair, which are currently among the world's biggest in terms of revenue, visitors and growth.171819 It hosted the Universal Exposition in 1906 and 2015. The city hosts numerous cultural institutions, academies and universities, with 11% of the national total enrolled students.20 Milan is the destination of 8 million overseas visitors every year, attracted by its museums and art galleries that boast some of the most important collections in the world, including major works by Leonardo da Vinci. The city is served by a large number of luxury hotels and is the fifth-most starred in the world by Michelin Guide.21 The city is home to two of Europe's most successful football teams, A.C. Milan and F.C. Internazionale, and one of Italy's main basketball teams, Olimpia Milano. Etymology The etymology of the name ''Milan (Lombard: Milan miˈlãː) remains uncertain. One theory holds that the Latin name Mediolanum comes from the Latin words medio (in the middle) and planus (plain).22 However, some scholars believe that lanum comes from the Celtic root lan, meaning an enclosure or demarcated territory (source of the Welsh word llan, meaning "a sanctuary or church", ultimately cognate to English/German Land) in which Celtic communities used to build shrines.23 Hence Mediolanum could signify the central town or sanctuary of a Celtic tribe. Indeed, about sixty Gallo-Roman sites in France bore the name "Mediolanum", for example: Saintes (Mediolanum Santonum) and Évreux (Mediolanum Aulercorum).24 In addition, another theory links the name to the boar sow (the Scrofa semilanuta) an ancient emblem of the city, fancifully accounted for in Andrea Alciato's Emblemata (1584), beneath a woodcut of the first raising of the city walls, where a boar is seen lifted from the excavation, and the etymology of Mediolanum given as "half-wool",25 explained in Latin and in French. The foundation of Milan is credited to two Celtic peoples, the Bituriges and the Aedui, having as their emblems a ram and a boar;26 therefore "The city's symbol is a wool-bearing boar, an animal of double form, here with sharp bristles, there with sleek wool."27 Alciato credits Ambrose for his account.28 History During the Prehistory and Roman Times, Milan appears to have been founded around 600 BC by the Celtic Insubres, after whom this region of northern Italy was called Insubria. According to the legend reported by Livy, the Gaulish king Ambicatus sent his nephew Bellovesus into northern Italy at the head of a party drawn from various Gaulish tribes; this Bellovesus was said to have founded Mediolanum (in the time of Tarquinius Priscus, according to this legend).29 The Romans, led by consul Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Calvus, fought the Insubres and captured the city in 222 BC; the chief of the Insubres submitted to Rome, giving the Romans control of the city.30 They eventually conquered the entirety of the region, calling the new province Cisalpine Gaul—"Gaul this side of the Alps"—and may have given the site its Latinized Celtic name of Mediolanum: in Gaulish *medio-'' meant "middle, center" and the name element ''-lanon is the Celtic equivalent of Latin ''-planum'' "plain", thus *Mediolanon (Latinized as Mediolānum) meant "(settlement) in the midst of the plain".3132 In 286 Diocletian moved the capital of the Western Roman Empire from Rome to Mediolanum. He chose to reside at Nicomedia in the Eastern Empire, leaving his colleague Maximian at Milan. Maximian built several gigantic monuments, the large circus (470 × 85 metres), the thermae or "Baths of Hercules", a large complex of imperial palaces and other services and buildings of which fewer visible traces remain. Maximian increased the city area surrounded by a new, larger stone wall (about 4.5 km long) encompassing an area of 375 acres with many 24-sided towers. The monumental area had twin towers; one that was included in the convent of San Maurizio Maggiore remains 16.6 m high. It was from Milan that the Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan in 313 AD, granting tolerance to all religions within the Empire, thus paving the way for Christianity to become the dominant religion of the Empire. Constantine was in Milan to celebrate the wedding of his sister to the Eastern Emperor, Licinius. In 402, the city was besieged by the Goths and the Imperial residence was moved to Ravenna. In 452, it was besieged again by Attila, but the real break with its Imperial past came in 538, during the Gothic War, when Mediolanum was laid to waste by Uraia, a nephew of Witiges, King of the Goths, with great loss of life.33 The Lombards took Ticinum as their capital (renaming it ‘Papia’, hence the modern Pavia), and Early Medieval Milan was left to be governed by its archbishops. During the Middle Ages, It was after the city was besieged by the Visigoths in 402, the imperial residence was moved to Ravenna. An age of decadence began which worsened when Attila, King of the Huns, sacked and devastated the city in 452 AD. In 539, the Ostrogoths conquered and destroyed Milan during the Gothic War against Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. In the summer of 569 the Lombards (from which the name of the Italian region Lombardy derives), conquered Milan, overpowering the small Byzantine garrison left for its defence. Some Roman structures remained in use in Milan under Lombard rule.34 Milan surrendered to Charlemagne and the Franks in 774. The 11th century saw a reaction against the control of the German emperors. The city-state was born, an expression of the new political power of the city and its will to fight against all feudal powers. Milan was no exception. It did not take long, however, for the City States to begin fighting each other to try to limit neighbouring powers.35 The Milanese destroyed Lodi and continuously warred with Pavia, Cremona and Como, who in turn asked the Emperor of Germany, Frederick I Barbarossa for help. This brought the destruction of much of Milan in 1162. A fire destroyed the storehouses containing the entire food supply, and within just a few days Milan was forced to surrender. A period of peace followed and Milan prospered as a centre of trade due to its position. As a result of the independence that the Lombard cities gained in the Peace of Constance in 1183, Milan became a duchy. In 1447 Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, died without a male heir; following the end of the Visconti line, the Ambrosian Republic was established; it took its name from St. Ambrose, the popular patron saint of the city.36 Both the Guelph and the Ghibelline factions worked together to bring about the Ambrosian Republic in Milan. Nonetheless, the Republic collapsed when, in 1450, Milan was conquered by Francesco I of the House of Sforza, which made Milan one of the leading cities of the Italian Renaissance.3637 During the Early modern, Milan's last independent ruler, Lodovico il Moro, called French king Charles VIII into Italy in the expectation that France might be an ally against other Italian statelets. The future king of France, Louis of Orléans, took part in the expedition and realised Italy was virtually defenceless. This prompted him to come back a few years later in 1500, and claim the Duchy of Milan for himself, his grandmother having been a member of the ruling Visconti family. At that time, Milan was also defended by Swiss mercenaries. After the victory of Louis's successor François I over the Swiss at the Battle of Marignan, the duchy was promised to the French king François I. When the Spanish Habsburg Emperor Charles V defeated François I at the Battle of Pavia in 1525, northern Italy, including Milan, passed to Habsburg Spain.38 In 1556, Charles V abdicated in favour of his son Philip II and his brother Ferdinand I. Charles's Italian possessions, including Milan, passed to Philip II and remained with the Spanish line of Habsburgs, while Ferdinand's Austrian line of Habsburgs ruled the Holy Roman Empire. The Great Plague of Milan in 1629–31 killed an estimated 60,000 people out of a population of 130,000. This episode is considered one of the last outbreaks of the centuries-long pandemic of plague that began with the Black Death.39 In 1700 the Spanish line of Habsburgs was extinguished with the death of Charles II. After his death, the War of the Spanish Succession began in 1701 with the occupation of all Spanish possessions by French troops backing the claim of the French Philippe of Anjou to the Spanish throne. In 1706, the French were defeated in Ramillies and Turin and were forced to yield northern Italy to the Austrian Habsburgs. In 1713–1714 the Treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt formally confirmed Austrian sovereignty over most of Spain's Italian possessions including Lombardy and its capital, Milan. During the late modern and contemporary, the Milanese rebelled against Austrian rule, during the so-called "Five Days" (Italian: Le Cinque Giornate), and Field Marshal Radetzky was forced to withdraw from the city temporarily on 18 March 1948. The Kingdom of Sardinia stepped in to help the insurgents; a plebiscite held in Lombardy decided in favour of unification with Sardinia. However, after defeating the Sardinian forces at Custoza on 24 July, Radetzky was able to reassert Austrian control over Milan and northern Italy. A few years on, however, Italian nationalists again called for the removal of Austria and Italian unification. Sardinia and France formed an alliance and defeated Austria at the Battle of Solferino in 1859.40 Following this battle, Milan and the rest of Lombardy were incorporated into the Kingdom of Sardinia, which soon gained control of most of Italy and in 1861 was rechristened as the Kingdom of Italy. The political unification of Italy cemented Milan's commercial dominance over northern Italy. It also led to a flurry of railway construction that had started under Austrian patronage (Venice–Milan; Milan–Monza) that made Milan the rail hub of northern Italy. Thereafter with the opening of the Gotthard (1881) and Simplon (1906) railway tunnels, Milan became the major South European rail focus for business and passenger movements e.g. the Simplon Orient Express. Rapid industrialization and market expansion put Milan at the centre of Italy's leading industrial region, including extensive stone quarries that have led to much of the air pollution we see today in the region. In the 1890s Milan was shaken by the Bava-Beccaris massacre, a riot related to a high inflation rate. Meanwhile, as Milanese banks dominated Italy's financial sphere, the city became the country's leading financial centre. In 1919, Benito Mussolini's Blackshirts rallied for the first time in Piazza San Sepolcro and later began their March on Rome in Milan. During the Second World War Milan suffered extensive damage from Allied bombings.41 When Italy surrendered in 1943, German forces occupied most of Northern Italy until 1945. As a result, resistance groups formed.42 As the war came to an end, the American 1st Armored Division advanced on Milan—but before they arrived, the resistance seized control of the city and executed Mussolini along with several members of his government. On 29 April 1945, the corpses of Mussolini, his mistress Clara Petacci and other Fascist leaders were hanged in Piazzale Loreto. During the post-war economic boom, a large wave of internal migration (especially from rural areas of Southern Italy) moved to Milan. The population grew from 1.3 million in 1951 to 1.7 million in 1967.43 During this period, Milan was largely reconstructed, with the building of several innovative and modernist skyscrapers, such as the Torre Velasca and the Pirelli Tower.44 The economic prosperity was, however, overshadowed in the late 1960s and early 1970s during the so-called Years of Lead, when Milan witnessed an unprecedented wave of street violence, labour strikes and political terrorism. The apex of this period of turmoil occurred on 12 December 1969, when a bomb exploded at the National Agrarian Bank in Piazza Fontana, killing seventeen people and injuring eighty-eight. In the 1980s, with the international success of Milanese houses (like Armani, Versace and Dolce & Gabbana), Milan became one of the world's fashion capitals. The city saw also a marked rise in international tourism, notably from America and Japan, while the stock exchange increased its market capitalisation more than five-fold.45 This period led the mass media to nickname the metropolis "Milano da bere", literally "Milan to drink".46 However, in the 1990s, Milan was badly affected by Tangentopoli, a political scandal in which many politicians and businessmen were tried for corruption. The city was also affected by a severe financial crisis and a steady decline in textiles, automobile and steel production.44 In the early 21st century, Milan underwent a series of sweeping redevelopments. Its exhibition centre moved to a much larger site in Rho.47 New business districts such as Porta Nuova and CityLife 48 were constructed. With the decline in manufacturing, the city has sought to develop on its other sources of revenue, including publishing, finance, banking, fashion design, information technology, logistics, transport and tourism.49 In addition, the city's decades-long population decline seems to have come to an end in recent years, with signs of recovery as it grew by seven percent since the last census. Category:Cities Category:Europe